weds open, acorn fishery paddock lake

27 fishing again today with several new faces so the venue is becoming more popular, probably due to its close proximity to the motorway and bristol, it only takes me 35 mins to get there from my house which is a short journey .
somebody pulled two tickets out stuck together so i had the one closest to me and ended up on peg 15, its hard to say which is a good draw and which is bad, the only thing is that this end of the lake does tend to hold bigger fish, hard to say why that is unless its just down to wind direction as the prevailing south and westerly winds blow to this end. the forcasters nearly got it right today with rain from 10 am to 2 pm. well it started at 9 but it did actually stop very nearly at 2 exactly then the sun came out and dried us all up, and they got the wind right as it was very gusty and strong and when the rain stopped the wind got stronger which on snake lakes can make presentation very awkward, martin alexander on my left set up a lead rod and with a couple of anglers catching on the method in recent matches that may not be a bad shout, my plan was just top 3 and 2 and just meat on the hook, so i set up a .5g and a .8g rig with 18 9313 hooks on .14 which is plenty strong enough for these fish as they average about 3lb ish, and a margin rig with the same hook and line.
at the start i cupped in half a pot at 5mtrs and down the edge, starting a 5mtrs i had to wait about 5 mins for the first bite and fish, martin had already had one on the lead but that was all he had on it, the first couple of hours went quite well with about 15 fish which wasnt manic but no one was running away with it so i thought i was still doing ok, it took another 2 hours to get to 20 fish which was all i wanted to put in one net, the last 2 hours were marginally better but with only 10 fish going into the second net i thought a section win was going to be my only chance of a pick up, the margin gave me a couple of fish but they were only small so that was a bit of a waste of time, at the end i thought my carp would go about 90lb and with 10lb of silvers i may just scrape 100lb, and walking round to start the weigh in only a few people were admitting to having 100lb, and that s how it turned out with one fish seperating the top 4.
1st on the day went to paul lock on peg9 with 115.13 catching close on meat
2nd mark bartlett who must have got it wrong on peg 5 as he only had 113.8, if he doesnt have to cast 200yds and feed with a spod he does tend to struggle
3rd tony rixon 111.11 peg 15
4th adrian jeffery 111.05 peg 12, i only just beat him as i had a last gasp 4lb fish hooked in the eye lol
5th mike nicholls 107.06 peg 2
6th glen bailey 93.5 peg 29
silvers went to new silvers ace phil(fabio)harding on 22 with 31.5 of f1,s and skimmers at 5mtrs on caster